Pre-Commentary: The film parodies a Jules Verne story, From
the Earth to the Moon, and H.G. Wells The First Men in the
Moon, but Méliès insisted that narrative considerations
were negligible for him compared to his film tricks, his "little
abracadabras."

Summary: Follies girls celebrate the trip and a large cannon
shoots a spaceship full of scientists to the moon. They hit the eye of
the man in the moon, sleep on the moon's surface, and are covered with
lunar dust. They discover a cave with giant mushrooms and soil fertile
enough to allow their umbrellas to take root. An alien disappears when
tapped with an umbrella. The scientists are captured and taken to the
moon's ruler, protected by his lobster guard. They escape, return to
Earth, land in the ocean, and get picked up by a ship.

Commentary: Most consider this the first significant science
fiction film, primarily because of its relative length for the time.
Around 1900, in America, England, and France, filmmakers began to tell
stories that, even if crude, required more than one shot. French magician
Georges Méliès was one of the pioneers who devised a style
of cutting to continuity, with narrative segments connected by a fade-out
then a fade-in to the next. After seeing the Lumière
brothers first film project in 1895, he rigged a combined camera
and projector and began making phantasmagorias blending stage effects and
new optical effects such as multiple exposure. So in addition to being an
innovator in the narrative full-length film, Méliès can be
considered the first special-effects wizard. He accidentally discovered
special effects, the story goes, while filming on a Paris street in 1896.
His camera jammed, so that after he fixed the problem and developed the
film, the gap made it look like a bus had turned into a hearse.
Thereafter, he advertised his films as stories in "arranged
scenes." He created such scenes as two dirigibles floating a
railroad car into outer space. By 1924 he was reduced to obscurity,
selling toys in a Paris subway kiosk.